There Is No Center at ROH Projects arrives not as a conventional presentation of artworks, but as an event in the truest sense—a disturbance in the usual flow of time. Extending beyond the gallery’s familiar five-week format, the twelve-week-long exhibition challenges the static nature of traditional exhibition-making, embracing a fluid proposition in which artworks enter and exit the exhibition at irregular intervals and for undisclosed periods, and performative actions instigate reconfigurations of how and where works are positioned. These movements establish ever-changing contexts and reconsideration of the works vis a vis in relation to each other, as well as in relation to themselves.
Raha Raissnia will be installing new paintings in the second week of March, and hosting a film-performance on March 9. Read more details at the link below.
Reina Sugihara fantasizes about breathing like a bird—having constant access to fresh air, as she told me, and being able to inhale and exhale deeply as if it were second nature. Inherited from their dinosaur ancestors, the nine to eleven air sacs attached to birds’ lungs allow for oxygen storage enabling effortless and effective breathing. In today’s stress-filled world where we need meditation and breathing classes for their constant reminders to respire deeply and correctly, these small, round, inconspicuous air sacs seem like something that might be as beneficial for humans as they are necessary for birds.
Emerging from the shadows of Empty Gallery’s customarily dark sanctum, Reina Sugihara’s paintings—softly illuminated by spotlights—exuded a quiet primordial force. Her abstract biomorphic forms, rendered in tones ranging from earthy to carnal, resemble blistering encrustations. The thickly painted canvases, some large enough to loom over the viewer, support viscous deposits of pigment and gesso that fissure as they dry. One thinks of scorched terrain, cooling lava, or half-healed wounds and scabs, but the associations are brief—the paintings resist legibility.
The artistic practice of DORIS GUO (*1992 in San Francisco, lives and works in Oslo), spanning a variety of media, is based on capturing moods and precise observations, distilled into multi-layered works and atmospheres. Her materials often consist of used, everyday objects, brought into relation through Guo’s sensitive combinations. For her first institutional solo exhibition Bent at the Window at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Guo develops new works and extends existing ones in dialogue with the exhibition space: among them, self-built projectors that cast static images onto the walls, as well as a new series of sculptures that further deepen Guo’s interest in translating objects into alternative material and mental states.
The exhibition will be on view from March 15 through June 1, 2025.
Curator: Junia Thiede
At MO.CO., Sense Unknown brings together more than one hundred works by thirty artists, offering an open and porous journey between materials, experiments, disciplines, and eras, with the aim of testing reality – or what we know of it. The exhibition will be on view from February 15 through May 18, 2025.
In Chaos : Making a New Science (1987), James Gleick points out that the development of a scientific theory is often based on the repetition of experiments and the recurrence of an event. An isolated event is therefore considered an error. However, in the research process, serendipity, chance discovery, accident, and the acceptance of a twist of faith open up new pathways that were beyond our predictions. We then move from known worlds into the unknown.
The artists in the exhibition Sense Unknown sometimes come from scientific backgrounds, while others have worked with scientists or are simply passionate about one of these fields. They share a common interest in experimenting with the unknown through the reinterpretation of scientific forms and processes.
Participating artists include: Isabelle Andriessen, Art Orienté Objet, Berdaguer & Péjus, Hicham Berrada, Morgan Courtois, HR Giger, Joey Holder, Tishan Hsu, Cooper Jacoby, Yunchul Kim, Josh Kline, Roy Köhnke, Kinke Kooi, Tetsumi Kudo, Emma Kunz, Candice Lin ; Pei-Ying Lin, Špela Petrič, Dimitris Stamatis & Jasmina Weiss ; Mary Maggic, Guadalupe Maravilla, Nam June Paik, Jean Painlevé, Bernard Palissy, Eduardo Paolozzi, Luboš Plný, Lea Porsager, Josephine Pryde, Victorien Sardou, Jeremy Shaw, Kiki Smith, Alina Szapocznikow, Haena Yoo, Anna Zemánková.
Taro Masushio is participating in the group exhibition Cool Invitations 11, from January 18 through February 2, 2025. The exhibition at XYZ Collective, Tokyo, is curated by MISAKO&ROSEN.
Participating artists include: Maki Katayama, Yui Yaegashi, Ryohei Usui, Chan Cho Kiu Bunchi, COBRA, Futoshi Miyagi, Zon Ito, Ryoko Aoki, Hiroshi Sugito, Shunsuke Imai, Masaya Chiba, Hanna Hur, Trevor Shimizu, John Riepenhoff, Sara Caron, Will Rogan, Margaret Lee, Taro Masushio, Hikotaro Kanehira, MISAKO&ROSEN
The gallery is open Thursday – Saturday from 1pm – 6pm, as well as Sundays, 1pm – 5pm. It is closed on Mon, Tue, Wed and National holidays.
Xper.Xr will participating in a two-person exhibition with Delia Gonzalez at Hot Wheels Athens London, as part of Condo London, taking place 18 January through 15 February, 2025.
Empty Gallery is pleased to participate in the third edition of Dallas Invitational, from April 10–12 at the historic Mansion on Turtle Creek.
Organised by Olivia Shao, Legal Size is a group exhibition at Gandt, New York, from December 7 through February 9, 2025.
Participating artists include: Richard Aldrich, George Brecht, Lyndon Barrois Jr., Elise Duryee-browner, Curie Choi, Franz Erhard Walther, Peter Fischli, Jef Geys, Doris Guo, Raymond Hains, Bradley Kronz, Matthew Langan Peck, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Aki Sasamoto, Enzo Shalom, Mike Smith and Rosemarie Trockel.
Amid his exhibition at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, the Japanese bricolage photographer presents art as helping us sit with the discomfort of the unknown.
In the last essay he published before passing away on 23 October 2024, Gary Indiana wrote about photographs: “We all live at least one or two lives that we subtract from our biographies. Areas of un-revisited, unhealed pain or such monumental nothingness that they’re not worth remembering. Then, infrequently, some evidence turns up, often photographic evidence. You are seized, suddenly, by a grisly species of curiosity.”
Born in Japan and now living in New York, artist Taro Masushio’s exhibition “Pass” at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong is replete with photographic evidence, but contains little of facts and does not reward undue curiosity. Masushio’s reprinting of his father’s amateur travel photography on the cardboard of care packages shipped across the world from father to son conjures a haptic, material intimacy mediated by impersonal logistics networks. A series of sparing, high-contrast still-life photographs catalogues enigmatic objects sourced intuitively from his father’s belongings and the artist’s own collection – a book of Rimbaud’s poetry, a pair of male Ainu figurines, testosterone supplements, photo paper, a darkroom safe light. The effect is disruption of the impulse towards certainty in meaning-making, the recognizable objects utterly drained of their indexicality, despite their unambiguous familial, autobiographical, and sexual connotations.
Installation view of Xper. Xr: Bad Timing.
Courtesy of the artist and Empty Gallery
Photo: Michael Yu
繼 《Tailwhip》之後,Empty Gallery 再度為大家帶來與Xper.Xr 二度合作的展覽 《Bad Timing》,展出的是 Xper.Xr 在近三十年間首度發佈的全新創作。 Xper 在香港藝術史中的位置極具開創性及啟導性,但其成就卻一直被忽視;可以說,Xper 幾乎是以單人匹馬之力,肩負起工業音樂、無浪潮和噪音音樂共同傳承中所體現的激進個人主義和反威權主義的各種潛力在一個地區的整體表現。 《Bad Timing》中這位從未停步的煽動者重拾他擱置已久的繪畫實踐 (他前次展出畫作已是1991年在Quart Society的事),當中更出現一種反常及出人意表的轉向,直指社會人像圖。
受到香港近年因政府施政不當、政治衝突及精英棄責所帶來的低氣壓挑動, 這組全新畫作描繪一班傾向背棄公眾信義的國際社政作俑者:由金融專家、科技權威到宗教領袖。每幅人像作品皆相稱於其取自經典流行曲曲目的譏諷式標題(例如「 MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack」),此可視為是 Xper在其職業生涯中對具代表性曲調假意翻唱的執迷延伸轉移到繪畫這個媒介之上,且同時把社會的權力行使與文化產業的運作深刻徹骨地聯繫起來。
取材自公開照片,Xper首先在由豬片拉展而成的圓面上繪畫指涉人物的相像,然後對這人像進行類儀式性塗污,這種表現主義式的朦朧處理,使得出來的畫面充滿了人造膿液、粘液和其他物質所造成的耀目沉積床。這些帶宣洩性(並且非常幽默)的糟蹋痕跡指向這些作品是出自私人表演的隱密領域。它們暗示自身的功能是作為 Xper (可能是失敗的)治療嘗試以從他心智景觀中驅除某些特定公眾人物所帶來的毒性影響——一種在個體經驗與媒體認可共識現實兩者間邊界日益多孔的文化時刻中強而有力的關聯脈衝。然而,如果這些畫作籍它們的表現力在姿態上指向一種理想的控制,在這樣做之時它們是充分了解到這只是一種出自青少年幻想式的簡單動作——缺乏任何真正的政治效力,帶出的只是以黑色至極的幽默作為潛在阻力的一種形式。
雖然《Bad Timing》展出的人像畫作為宣洩憤怒多少帶著真摯的出口可能發揮了很好的作用,但就如 Xper 其他的創作實踐般,它們充斥著矛盾和自我破壞、死路和拐錯彎:在私下操縱中成自動毀滅的悲喜劇物品。它們預演甚至沈醉於其自身的社政失敗,把批評——藝術資本最吹噓的形式——搬演為自我撕破的鬧劇。這組畫作與觀者及彼此交換著合謀的目光,作為一個整體它們又似乎表達出一種了解恐懼的感覺:鬼崇惡意的一種模仿,或是潛伏於宏莊詭計背後一種龐大而可怕共謀的輪廓。當其優雅地指使空間的中央位置讓路予迷宮般的黑暗時,《Bad Timing》 讓人聯想到社政的未來不僅已被取消了回贖權,並且以某種方式故意妥協了——受制於一種永遠潛伏在我們集體意識邊緣之外的幽暗共識。